The commercial aviation finds another obstacle in its process, still incipient, towards full recovery after the halt in its activity caused by the commercial pandemic. And it is that the airlines are encountering the impact that the economic restrictions crossed between Russia and the Western powers in the game of retaliation for the military invasion of Ukraine have on their operations.
At the end of February, with the military invasion of Ukraine just beginning, the European Union banned all Russian airlines from their airspace and the Kremlin’s immediate response was to ban airlines from 36 countries from flying over its own airspace, including they Spain. The result is that hundreds of companies have to reorganize their routes to avoid the prohibitions, while all of them also avoid flying over Ukraine due to the certain security danger of being a war zone.
Faced with this situation, Iberia has had to introduce changes in its operations flights to China to circumvent Russian airspace, which has forced him to introduce stopovers in the middle of his flights to refuel and be able to cover greater distances than the enormous detour that planes now have to take.
Iberia has two weekly flights between Madrid and Shanghai. These are charter operations, which the airline of the IAG group – the holding company that also includes Vueling and British Airways – operates for a travel agency specializing in connections with the Asian giant and does not market them directly. After the establishment of sanctions by the EU and by Russia, Iberia had to suspend one of its flights.
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To circumvent Russian airspace, the company has had to modify the route of the flights, and now make longer journeys flying over Italy, Greece, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Kazakhstan until reaching China. The flights from Madrid to Shanghai continue to be direct, but Iberia has been forced to make stops on the return flights.
During the last few weeks, Iberia has been making stops to refuel in rome and for a few days he has also been doing them alternately in Athens. The trips from Asia to Europe are somewhat longer than the other way around and, in addition, on the flights from China the planes come not only with passengers, but also with a large amount of merchandise, which increases the weight of the device and the consumption of kerosene is greater.